Grim
by LJ58
Summary: Remember Billy and Mandy?  They're back, only this time Mandy's ambitions may be a bit more...


_I do not own the characters named within, and am only using to them to tell a tale for entertainment purposes only._

**Grim **

**By LJ58**

_So, then, it came to pass in the sixteenth year of the Great Lady, that she did take upon her shoulders the Cloak of Death, and lifted the Reaper's Scythe that made her even more powerful, and called down upon her head the very mantle of Death itself. _

_And that was just the start…._

_-Tales of the Beyond_

It was time.

She had been planning for this for years. Ever since she had broken into that idiot's trunk, and found a true copy of the Necronomicon. The dread grimoire gave wings to her ambition, and prepared her for the path she had long envisioned as her own.

Mistress of the world itself.

Mistress, perhaps, of even more than one paltry globe.

She had bided her time. Prepared as she had learned what was proper and necessary, and waited until the moment she was ready. In the meantime, she gathered the elements necessary.

A virgin's seed. Easily taken from an idiot that still trotted after her like a witless puppy.

Dust ground covertly from Death's own bones when she occasionally 'borrowed' pieces of her unnatural friend conscripted so long ago in a child's game. Having the Reaper himself bound to her in that silly wager he made over a worthless hamster was beyond amusing. Learning that his honor and oath gave her far more power than even she had first realized only added to that glee she currently felt.

Blood from her own virgin body added power to the serum, and the book of dread itself guided her in laying down the equations necessary to open the gates of the beyond to her as she sat cross-legged in the middle of her chalk gate clad only in the cloak of Death taken from the idiot now watching a Lifetime Channel Marathon of insipid tripe. Across her otherwise naked thighs lay the Reaper's own scythe, and she smirked as she remarked on how easily she already manipulated that otherwise grim instrument of Eternity.

She pulled the cloak's hood over her silvery-white blonde mane, and tightened her right hand on the scythe as her left lifted the skull of a dead man that held her potent potion.

Reciting the proper incantation she had practiced for over a year, she lifted the skull to her lips, and as required, drank life and death as one as she raised the scythe, and unleashed its power around her.

**X**

Grim sighed happily as he watched the angst-ridden performances of truly miserable people on the television before him in HD, simultaneously bemoaning the fact they didn't have such entertainments in his time. He was, after all, only the most recent incarnation of Death in this generation. He had only been around for a few centuries, and it had actually gotten a bit boring after a time.

Until he showed up for a stupid hamster in a kid's bedroom.

Usually, he had interns handle the small things like pets and animals.

His had been busy at that time, and he had not really broken a child's innocent heart in nearly a decade, so he decided to go himself that time around.

He had little idea that this child was not so innocent. Nor so easily broken.

Before he had realized it, she had manipulated him into accepting a game, and a wager that left him bound by the rules of the Eternal as their friend. Read: Slave. Because where Billy really was as big an idiot as he had guessed, that little blonde had something in her that genuinely terrified even him at times. And he had lived through the Black Death!

Still, he had to admit, the two mortal children did bring back excitement to his life. Sometimes more than he wanted.

Just now, after that dustup in the Middle East, and a very long working holiday, he just wanted to relax, and enjoy a little human misery. The Lifetime Channel was perfect for him. The maudlin, unnaturally bitter storytelling only fed the darker passions of those on both sides of the ancient battle between the sexes, and he had to admit one of his demon friends below had been having a good day when he, she, or it came up with this one.

Even as he was watching the stereotypical abusive boyfriend pound the almost sickeningly heroic damsel in obvious distress yet again, he felt something that made even his fleshless visage draw into a scowl.

He looked away from the screen, ignoring the pixilated images for a moment as he focused his preternatural awareness beyond the physical realm, and realized something supernatural was happening not far away.

Just down in the basement, in fact.

He frowned, and looked around, seeing his missing scythe, and groaned.

"What are those two up to now," he groaned as the skeletal frame of the unmasked Reaper rose from the couch, leaving behind the popcorn he had been 'eating.'

He was halfway to the basement door when he realized his bones were starting to stiffen and ache. He held out a hand, clenching it into a bony fist, and felt the tug and pull of ligaments long since rotted away. Or rather, that should have been long since rotted away.

"Great scars of Beelzebub," he howled, seeing tendons and raw muscle starting to materialize around his boney body. "What is that crazed bitch doing now?"

He staggered to the door, pulled it open, and stared down into a blinding stygian dark such as only the undead know.

"Mandy," he howled, his throat raw and throbbing as real breath sounded from real lungs now swelling in his ribcage as flesh began to grow around his raw veins and muscles. "What are you doing?"

A low, manic chortle sounded out of the dark, and Grim felt his newly restored blood run cold. Literally.

A huge, clawed hand reached out of the ether, and pulled him down into the stygian dark as he howled his fear.

"Shame on you, Grim," a familiar, if twisted tone drawled as he was held before a malicious smiling face thrice his size. "Surely the Grim Reaper shouldn't fear his own disciple!"

"D-Disciple," he choked, staring at the huge, pale round face like a moon before his eyes now as that hand released him, and he seemed to fall endlessly before slamming into a hard surface with a surprisingly lot of pain.

Real pain.

The kind he had left behind generations ago in the mortal world.

Slowly, the inky dark began to dissipate, and he found himself laying at the feet of a tall, voluptuous blonde with feral features sneering down at him from beneath his own cloak. Her right hand was curled around his scythe, and her eyes looked more than a little red rather than the familiar glacial blue he recalled.

"What have done, girl," he demanded, his voice a simpering squeak just then as he realized he was clambering onto his knees, completely fleshy, and completely naked as she glared down at him.

"What have I done?"

Her mocking laughter was not balm to his soul. She sounded like someone had shoved her right over the cliffs of despair into true madness. The problem was, Mandy had always sounded like that. She was, he knew, the one mortal in the entire world that was likely scarier than anything else he knew in any world on either side of the Great Rift.

"Can't you guess, Grim? I just borrowed a little of your power. The power you so carelessly ignored, and rarely used," she said, holding out her left hand that glowed with a dark red akin to aged blood.

"You don't know what you're doing, child," he squeaked again. "You're unsettling the natural balance….."

"Says the pet Reaper than won't even use his full powers," she laughed, and reached out to pat his head. "Still, seeing you in the flesh, as it were, I can see why you made such a lame Reaper, Grim. You weren't much of a man, were you," she asked mockingly as her cold eyes slowly regained her blue tint, though it was a darker, and colder blue than ever before now. "So, it only stands to reason you weren't much of a Reaper."

"Mandy, you have to give me back me scythe. I can still undo…."

"I don't think so, Grim. With you here, we can seal this little ritual, and ensure my reign will last forever," she grinned, her smile truly a thing of evil.

Part of him wanted to weep at the sheer beauty of her raw ambition.

Part of him shuddered at what awaited the world under her heel.

She moved, her right hand using the scythe to slash at his chest, spilling his once more mortal blood.

She licked the blood from the shimmering steel even as she murmured, "Klattu….Verada….Nic…"

"_No_!" he wailed, and he seemed to be moving in slow motion as he tried in vain to reach her.

"…._Tuu_!"

Grim felt his entire body burn from the inside out as he dropped to his knees, his flesh scorching away once again only to grow back as Mandy's body burned with a halo of blackish-red flame. She laughed as her body pulsed with raw power, and the cloak shrank around her to form not a cloak, but a very snug, black mini that contained a much enhanced figure that only perfected the feminine curves she already possessed.

Curves he had lately begun to dream about rotting away, and falling into dust as his disgust with the girl only grew as he realized the teenager had no intention of ever releasing him from his vow to be 'friends forever.'

Part of the cloak became a pair of black boots that stretched up to her knees, just shy of the mini's hem that displayed much of her pale thighs. Mandy, he knew, wasn't much for tanning. Or anything else most other girls tended to indulge in during their formative years.

She stared down at him, still bleeding as the burning faded in his still mortal flesh, and he realized Mandy had just screwed him, the World, and the Underworld all in one telling blow.

"I'm _doomed," _he moaned, knowing who was going to be blamed for this one_._

Mandy just chortled.

And vanished in a burst of black flame.

Grim only wailed in fear. It was all he could do just then.


End file.
